Re: Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

As other commenters have pointed out, 13.3 million gallons = ~40.8 acre-feet and this being Nebraska, the obvious comparison is agriculture (Corn and Soybeans being the main crop).

The average Nebraska farm is 989 acers[1] as of 2022 and uses roughly ~1,200 acre-feet of water (or roughly 390 million gallons) per year[2]. So a single average Nebraska farm uses roughly 30 times the water the Lincoln data center uses per year. There are 44,479 farms/ranches covering 44 million acres, which accounts for over 90% of the state's total land area.

Until I looked this up, I didn't appreciate the scale of water usage in farming (even in a state like Nebraska that gets a large amount of rainfall compared to Central or Southern California). I hope that the current data center environmental focus continues to shed light on our industrial water and electrical usage.

[1]http://farmflavor.com/nebraska/nebraska-crops-livestock/top-...
[2]https://cropwatch.unl.edu/2024/2023-irrigation-and-water-man...

yeag123, 8 hours ago